Correlations between random variables may indicate the association and/or dependency between different variables from real or simulated data. It may be relatively straightforward to compute correlations between two continuous random variables based on arbitrary data samples. If both random variables are discrete, a polychoric correlation may be calculated for the two random variables. If two random variables include one discrete random variable and one continuous random variable, a polyserial correlation may be calculated for the one discrete random variable and the one continuous random variable.